Hey folks, I'm about 2 years into my ipf8300 and while I've not printed a ton I've certainly put the thing to regular use (total print area is 1,983sf). My images have just recently started looking very magenta in people and cyan in things that are supposed to be green. when I print a nozzle check the yellow boxes are crisp but faint. It's really hard for me to say if they're more or less faint than they should be since the yellow ink doesn't really stand out to begin with. Careful scrutiny under bright lights reveals that the yellow nozzle check pattern is regular (not faint/smudgy in the middle). The canon tech has suggested that I need a new print head because I'm not getting enough yellow ink out. Before I drop several hundred dollars I'm wondering a few things....with a workflow that is otherwise unchanged on an unchanged system have you had anything like this happen? Also, I see some ads for 3rd party head cleaning kits, anyone ever try one? I'm two A clean and two B cleanings in and not much has changed, I've now got the latest firmware, latest driver and an updated plugin....any other ideas?

While I'm at it, the canon rep says they go by the dot count. my left head says 170,300...give me an idea, is this a normal expiration point, way early, late?Many thanksMark

First of all you can do some head cleaning to see if that helps you.Second, you can use calibration adjustment on your printer menu to calibrate your printer back to the factory standard.Third, do you use custom profile or downloaded profile? If you can make your profile, why don't you just make another one to see if there's any improvement.

The yellow pattern is normally very faint and hard to see, I think it's a little easier to read by looking at the reflective difference on glossy paper.

Where do you get the dot count number? I recall one of the techs told me the life expectancy was about 1 trillion dots, or 10^12 dots. I think the dot volume is 4 picoliters, or 4 x 10^-12. That works out to 4 liters life expectancy, which is a number I have heard bantered around elsewhere.

I had one head go over 10 liters, but the others were more in the 3 to 5 liter range, based on the "Total Ink Consumed" in the accounting tab. Have only replaced the left head once.

On your previous post I mentioned all my magenta nozzles konked out and then came back. Well, the next day they were gone again and this time I could see magenta contamination in the lighter photo magenta pattern. That's all the tech needed to hear, he immediately sent me a replacement head, free overnight, with a return label for the old head. Problem solved.

Did your tech offer a free replacement? I have replaced a few heads on my 20,000+ sq foot machine. All were supplied free by Canon, although I bought one additional one so I would always have an instant spare. I'm just under 700 days, so maybe the free ride is over at two years. Or maybe they give preferential treatment to high volume ink addicts.

All I can think to do short of replacing the head is run a profile. On iccview.de check it for symmetry and bizarre bumps or holes. You can use a manufacturer's canned profile as a reference. Run another one a day or two later, then compare those two on iccview to see if there's some sort of trend going on.

dot count is printer info-> head info-> whichever head you want. it's listed in Mdot which I'm not sure if that means thousands or millions, if it's traditional printing industry I'd take it to be thousand so mine is actually 170,000X 1,000 - which still isn't near enough. if it's 4 liters then maybe, I think I'm on my third set of 300ml tanks.

tech didn't offer a free replacement. they replaced the right head at 14 months but I'm right at 2 years and they said I'd have to buy one. I wish Canon assigned pro's a referral number, I swear I sell a canon rebel system once a month and a 7d every other month from "what do you use, what should I buy" questions from my customers.

I've printed a handful of color profile reference targets and see the same craptacular magenta shift. tomorrow I'll try upgrading from photoshop cs5 to 6 (which I've been meaning to do.

tech suggested I try to restart my printing system too, gotta figure out how to do that and I'll try.

A reasonable diagnostic might be that if the problem evolved slowly, it's like to be a hardware problem. A sudden, fully blow appearance is more like a software issue.

For laughs, here's the quick 400 patch profile I ran just after I first noticed my particular issue. There's actually a wormhole from one side of the hull to the other! Did not bode well for color quality. I wrote it off to the fact that my i1 system is severely challenged by glossy canvas, but I should have paid more attention.

Did your tech offer a free replacement? I have replaced a few heads on my 20,000+ sq foot machine. All were supplied free by Canon, although I bought one additional one so I would always have an instant spare. I'm just under 700 days, so maybe the free ride is over at two years. Or maybe they give preferential treatment to high volume ink addicts.

Sounds very familiar to what a friend with several Canons did experience over the last 5 years, so he ordered the iPF9400 last week to replace an iPF9000. It will work along with an iPF8300 and some iPF5100s. No complaints on Canon service as there is a lot of paper and ink going through those printers.

for anyone who cares, at this stage I've reset my printing system - WAY easy, option click on the menu of printers in print and fax - I've uninstalled and reinstalled everything canon (all updated). I've upgraded to photoshop cs6, I've done 2 a cleanings, 2 b cleanings and what feels like a few hundred yards of test prints. I downloaded a couple color target charts and printed them and the ones with people everyone looks too magenta. My right print head has shown a slight variance in the nozzle check on the lower right black box from the begingin but the first two techs wrote that off because the problem seems to be that I'm not getting enough yellow. Today's tech said she's sending a new print head and it's absolutely the problem. The odd thing to me is that the right print head has been replaced once before and the left is original to the machine. hopefully the case is that I'm not geting enough black and there's nothing wrong with the yellow. We'll see when the fedex guy gets here.

I have 2 ipf8300 and I can tell you that canon has some issues with there print heads and the inks, I have replaced 6 print head in a two year time spanCanon is trying the resolve these issues in the ipf8400 with newer heads and different ink formula that why the ipf8400 uses new inks. I can tell you that I would not be surprised to see a class action lawsuit. This is unacceptable. I have a left print head out today; lets see if canon replaces it? lucky number 7

Canon print heads have a 1 year warranty. We have two 8300's and print on them all day long 5 days a week. The heads usually last about 8-10 months then when it goes bad canon sends us a new one overnight for free. If you don't print very much you should just purposely damage the print head every 10 months to get a new one for free. However I'm not suggesting this would work or canon would not catch on.

Our ipf 6100 is kept in sleep mode. Because I have my desk next to it I see what it does: every so often it wakes up and the screen says "checking nozzles", :Agitating", and "Checking temperature and humidity".

With the latter it is likely that when dry air is seen by the printer, it does it's nozzle routine more frequently.

In five years of moderate use I have never done a nozzle check before printing. Once the machine did one automatically after having been off for a month. I regularly do a calibration, which guarantees every color is used, as the weekly print.

iPF8400 uses the same ink - and many iPFx300 users reported, that Canon supplied free replacements after head failures.

In my iPF8300 both printheads are doing fine after >1,5 year of rather frequent use. I suggest to update iPF8300 firmware to newest v1.26, keep it on all the time, print regulary, and check humidity.

....when the ipf8300 was first released it used a different ink formulation....and the ink carts were "PFI-x04" it wasn't until later that the new formulation was released as "PFI-x06" cartridriges. Both types are still available and the IPF8300 lists the x04 and x06 as compatible to it.....BUT the IPF 8400 only lists the "x06" ink cartridges as compatible to it.

....when the ipf8300 was first released it used a different ink formulation....and the ink carts were "PFI-x04" it wasn't until later that the new formulation was released as "PFI-x06" cartridriges. Both types are still available and the IPF8300 lists the x04 and x06 as compatible to it.....BUT the IPF 8400 only lists the "x06" ink cartridges as compatible to it.

It isn't a different ink formulation - both x04 and x06 contain the same LUCIA EX pigment ink. The only difference is that x06 carts for Asian market won't work in EU/US printers, and x06 carts from EU/US market won't work in printers from Asian market.

After 3 1/2 years I had to replace the left head in my IPF 8300. It had less use than the right head (I don't remember the count). As others have said, I think less use is more often the cause of failure than over use. Still, I appreciate the fact that it was easily user replaceable, and I was back up and running in no time.

I've just had to replace the right head in my iPF8300 for the second time in 18 months, following an earlier service at which both were replaced by the technician (possibly unnecessarily - the root cause of the problem at that time may well have been a faulty data cable, see thread elsewhere). The first replacement right head failed at around six months, this one at a further 350 days or so, both with the same issue of 'echoes' in the nozzle check - i.e. a second set of fainter vertical lines offset from the main lines in one or more channels.

There was no obvious visible degradation in print quality, and the printer's routine nozzle checks did not report any errors, but some profiles I attempted to make last week were full of 'wormholes', inversions and jagged spikes, which is what first made me run a manual nozzle check.

The left head is now 556 days old and has a similar if less visible issue in the yellow channel. I also found a previous nozzle check (date unknown) which on close inspection showed a similar echo in this channel that I had previously missed, which leads me to think this head has also had undetected problems for some while.

The head usage figures are 91 Mdot for the right head and 189 Mdot for the left; the UK suppliers have agreed to replace the right head under warranty (it was fortunate that I found the problem just before the 365 days were up), but won't do anything about the left head as it is now over a year old, despite the low usage figure.

The printer is left on to do its own routine maintenance, is used regularly if not heavily, is kept very clean and is protected with a dust cover when not in use, etc etc. I am beginning to have serious doubts as to the longevity of these heads, and Canon or their agents in the UK do not appear disposed to offer any concessions in respect of early failure, contrary to reports I have read of their more helpful attitude elsewhere.

The lesson seems to be to keep track of the head age and to check very carefully in sufficient time before the year is up to claim a warranty replacement if necessary.

Canon print heads have a 1 year warranty. We have two 8300's and print on them all day long 5 days a week. The heads usually last about 8-10 months then when it goes bad canon sends us a new one overnight for free. If you don't print very much you should just purposely damage the print head every 10 months to get a new one for free. However I'm not suggesting this would work or canon would not catch on.

How do you sleep at night? Would you honestly consider purposely damaging a print head so you can get a free replacement? Have you no shame?